Right and below right: ‘Moonglow’,
‘Sunglow’ and ‘Snow.’
believe the Moonglow set a record price in Australia
including Murray-Darlings, black and gold Jungles,
for a snake. I would love to see one in every collection, Atherton Jungles, Coastals, Darwins, Bredl’s and
but it will take a while before they become main-
Rough-scaled, as well as Olives and BHPs.
stream.
iH: Are they used to strengthen your lines?
iH: It’s very difficult in Australia for specialist breeders
because of the limited market. I bet there is a lot of
DL: We have used pure wild types to help strengthen
interest from overseas though.
our morph lines, which is very important. We only
want to breed good, strong. healthy animals and out-
WL: It’s frustrating because people just don’t under-
crossing is sometimes needed to achieve that. But
stand the time, effort and expense that goes into these most of our wild-type snakes have never been used in
projects. Many people in this country don’t appreciate morph projects.
it, but overseas they have a different view of the
hobby. Heaps of people from overseas are like,
‘Oh my god!’
You’ve got to be in it because you love reptiles,
and not for the money. Yes, the sale of animals
now helps us to maintain our collection, but geez,
I’ve lost a lot over the years. We have over
$50,000 worth of cages! And our rat bill was so
high that I set my brother up to breed them. We
would spend well over $20,000 on rats every
year – easy. And our electricity bill is $3,000 per
quarter; don’t forget we live in sunny
Queensland!
DL: It’s scary.
iH: Now let’s set the record straight; you guys don’t
just keep morphs, do you?
DL: Many people don’t realise that we have a
good collection of pure wild-type pythons